Director David Chase recieves kudos from
New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani. Photo by Edward Reed

Three DGA members received the Crystal Apple Award from Mayor Rudolph Guiliani of New York at the 17th Annual Crystal Apple Awards on June 14 at Gracie Mansion.

David Chase, director and producer of The Sopranos, director/producer Ronald L. Schwary, and Darren Star, director/producer of Sex and the City, were among the seven recipients of the Award given to those film and television figures who stimulate film and video production in New York by consistently making the Big Apple their production base. The other honorees were producers Tom Fontana and Edward Pressman, TV host Regis Philbin and set designer George De Titta.

Chase joked that the reason he received the Award was gratitude that "we shoot our interiors [for The Sopranos] in Queens and our exteriors are all done in northern New Jersey, so you guys get all the money and the economy and they get all the traffic." New York gives him access "to the best actors in the world," he stated and emphasized to DGA Magazine after the Awards although he has shot films in Canada, "I don't like to see it when it's fake. This is our country. It's seen around the world, and there are so many great locations."

Schwary, who co-produces the TV show Now and Again, likes shooting in New York and eschews shooting scenes in Canada to cut corners because of the enormous cooperation he has received and the crews he has worked with and said, "You have everything on the East Coast."

In introducing Darren Star, Guiliani stated that New York provides Sex and the City with "an incredibly interesting background for an incredibly neurotic cast of characters." Star said, "There's no other city I could ever think of except New York City to film a show called Sex and the City."

 -Kevin Lewis